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The American Australian Association with the American Friends of the National Gallery of Australia (AFNGA) is appointing Mr. Aaron Cooper the 2014 AUSART Fellow. The Fellowship elicited keen interest from a highly competitive pool of applicants from top Australian visual artists and curators.

Aaron Cooper is a contemporary artist undertaking a Masters of Fine Art at Parsons, The New School for Design in New York. Working across sculpture, installation and photography – his practice investigates social, spatial and urban conditions from intersections of art and architecture. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Art from the Victorian College of the Arts/University of Melbourne and has received recognition from the Australia Council for the Arts, Bill Perrin Sculpture Foundry Prize, Ironside Studios Award and Victoria Harbour Young Artists Initiative. In his current research, Aaron maintains an interest in contiguous border systems, the interplay of visuality and space, and the varying structures that regulate built territories.

In mid-March Geoff Pack, the AFNGA President, travelled to Canberra to attend the Annual Donors’ Weekend hosted by the National Gallery of Australia. The weekend is always an extra-ordinary event with guests from all around Australia attending. Activities this year included gallery talks by the NGA’s curators, a private viewing of the attendance record-breaking “Gold and the Incas” exhibition, the very elegant Gala dinner in the Gandel Hall, and a breakfast at the Peruvian Ambassador’s residence. Geoff was also able to attend the NGA Foundation Board Meeting with Lee Edwards, who so ably and enthusiastically represents AFNGAI on the Foundation Board.

At the dinner Geoff presented a $209,000 check on behalf of AFNGAI to the Chairman of the NGA Foundation, John Hindmarsh (see photo). The donation was made possible thanks to generous support of Kenneth and Marabeth Tyler and The Wolfensohn Family Foundation.

The American Friends of the National Gallery of Australia (AFNGA) operates out of the American Australian Association.

They have a range of cultural and artistic events throughout the

year.

Mission Statement:

The purposes for which the Corporation is organized are to engage exclusively in charitable and educational purposes within the meaning of Section 501(c) 3 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986.

Such purposes include but are not limited to:

a. Fostering the visual arts in the United States and Australia by soliciting and collecting funds and contributions and to receive by gift, deed, legacy, bequest or devise, or otherwise to acquire money or property of every kind and description, and to administer the same, both as to principal and income, to make contributions from such principal and income toward the charitable and educational purposes of the National Gallery of Australia or other nonprofit, tax exempt visual arts organization in the United States or elsewhere, in the sole and absolute discretion of the board of directors of this corporation; and

b. Awarding grants to the National Gallery of Australia or other institutions in the United States and Australia or elsewhere for development and encouragement of the visual arts and for fostering the cultural exchange of art and artists between the United States, Australian, or other institutions, to promote the visual arts for the benefit of the people of the United States and Australia, all of the foregoing as may be in the sole and absolute discretion of the board of directors of this Corporation.